Big Screen Bite

Hola Readers.  Hubbin is a huge zombie fan...me...I find they all end up being the same thing.  That being said, on occasion somebody will come up with a way to refresh the genre...usually in book

form.  This winter I read The Girl With All the Gifts by M.R. Carey, my thoughts on which you can read here.  I mentioned that there was a movie and I was interested in this one in particular 'cause the author of the book wrote the screenplay simultaneously.  He stated that he made the screenplay purposely a bit different from the book to better fit the big screen format.  I was curious how this would turn out so on our last movie night we watched the film version.  For the most part I had almost the exact same feelings about the movie as I did the book.  The casting was pretty spot on, the world felt like a post apocalyptic zombie world, the story followed the book for pretty much everything...it was ok.  I felt that the world was better portrayed in the book, but the little actress that played Melanie really brought it.  I also felt that they could have done a better job advertising in the " hey this isn't really a movie for kids 'cause for real there is a whole lot of adult content in this movie" category.  Overall I felt that the movie really did not bring any of the uniqueness of the book...but still had some of the same pacing problems.  In the end I felt that neither was wholly original, neither was really bad, they were both interesting on certain points...but in the end as almost always, I liked the book better.  That being said, if you have read the book, go ahead and watch the movie 'cause there are some really cool parts.  Happy Reading Everybody!

Women With Issues And The Unstable Men Who Are Involved With Them

Hi Folks, sorry about the spotty posting, so to make it up to you let's get to a rambling shall we?  Today we ramble about one of the books I read while on my epic Texas vacation.  The book is The Girl on the Train by Paula Hawkins.  I read it for several reasons.  One, the movie is coming out so I had to read it before I go see it.  Two, the synopsis sounded awesome and I was in the mood for a good mystery.  Three, several people I know had read it and liked it.  How do I feel about the book about now that I have read it?  Read on and find out.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD!

 The book is divided into three voices, Rachel, Megan and Anna.  These three women all have a direct connection to an area around a particular train stop.  Rachel rides the train to London everyday and everyday she passes an are where she can see her old house, complete with her ex-husband, his new wife and their baby daughter.  She also can see the upper porch of another house with a couple that she gives a made up life to.  In her mind, this couple is perfect, they love each other and they have great jobs and deep conversations, essentially everything Rachel wants for her life.  So pretty much Rachel spends her days on this train, passing her old life and fantasizing about others while indulging her alcoholism while pretending to go to work so that the friend she is staying with won't know how messed up her life is.  We learn that Rachel was married to a guy named Tom and that the two of them had been trying to have a baby and when they failed Rachel started to turn to alcohol to alleviate the pain.  Tom meanwhile started an affair with Anna.  After the discovery of the affair, Tom and Rachel divorced and he married Anna and had a baby with her.  Rachel, especially when drinking can't leave it alone and constantly calls and visits her old house and husband.  One day while on the train and watching her fantasy couples house, she is shocked and appalled to see Megan kissing a guy who is not her husband.  This moment shatters her little fantasy world.  We switch perspectives and learn about Megan and Scott, the couple that Rachel likes to watch.  Megan is a bit of a messed up soul, she loves her husband, but can't help but feel trapped on occasion.  Scott is controlling and is constantly checking up on Megan...which while totally creepy and unacceptable turns out to be a thing 'cause she can't help but cheat when she feels trapped and controlled.   Megan goes to a therapist named Kamal whom helps her start to unravel why she is the way she is.  After failing to seduce him, she turns to him as a friend and reveals how after her beloved brother dies she ran away and hooked up with a guy name Mack.  The two of them live a poor, drug and alcohol fueled life until Megan gets pregnant.  She has the baby at their home and does her best.  One night the electricity is turned off and being alone Megan takes the baby and takes a hot bath to try and warm up.  She falls asleep and when she wakes up the baby is dead.  They bury the baby and Mack leaves Megan alone.  Megan eventually tries to get it together and marries Scott.  Back with Rachel, she has a particularly bad day and goes on a drinking binge and ends up waking up covered in blood with a head wound not remembering anything more then snatches of the night before.  She is also horrified to discover that Megan is missing.  Rachel goes a bit crazy and contacts the police about the guy she saw on the roof with Megan earlier.  She also goes to Scott with the information.  Her and Scott start a bit of a weird and twisted sort of kind of but not really a relationship.  Meanwhile we get a glimpse of Anna and how her relationship with Tom started.  We find that after the affair and the subsequent marriage and baby, Anna is now feeling a little stuck.  She is also increasingly worried about the frequency of calls and visits from the usually intoxicated Rachel, especially to her husband.  She begs Tom to convince Rachel to quit, he promises to, but the harassment continues.  Rachel spends more time around Scott and his house, which puts her near her old house, which continues to freak Anna out.  Rachel continues to try and recover her memories of the night she was black out drunk and starts to uncover some disturbing things about her previous relationship with Tom.  After an episode with Scott where he gets violent and locks her in the room after learning she lied about her relationship to Mlegan, Rachel tries to get sober.  After a whole lot of seriously messed up stuff all things are finally revealed.  Rachel realizes that the night of her black out she saw Megan get in a car with her ex-husband Tom.  It comes out that Megan was pregnant before she died and that the baby was not Scott's.  After putting it all together Rachel goes to Anna to share that she thinks Megan and Tom were having an affair and that she thinks Tom killed Megan.  Anna has already pretty much come to the same conclusion after finding some things in her husbands gym bag.  Tom comes home and we find that he had actually been abusing Rachel any time she was drunk when they were still married and then twisted it until Rachel blamed herself.  There is an intense struggle and Tom ends up dead.  The whole sordid story comes out and everybody is left to try their best to pick up the pieces.

World Building - The world in which this story takes place is pretty small.  The vast majority is in the small suburban area around the Witney train stop outside of modern times London.  The smallness of the world contributes to the claustrophobic interweirdness of the story (totally a word a swear it is).  It is very detailed for all it's smallness and I felt like I could probably walk this little neighborhood in my sleep and the train was it's own perfect world.  It's a great example of how you don't need to be sweeping and epic to create a complete world.

Story - Ok here is where my opinion is going to start to diverge from other peoples.  I thought the story was kind of trite.  There was nothing really new or exciting, it was another one of those hey a bunch of messed up people making poor decisions do messed up things to other messed up people which results in all kinds of messed up ness...maybe that should have been the title of this post.  I was kind of disappointed I wanted it to be so much more atmospheric and a lot less tawdry and voyeuristic.  That being said it was a complete story that was woven together to make sense, which is better then a lot of these stories do so that was good.

Characters - Again here is a category where I am torn.  The characters where well written, but I hated almost all of them...not to the level of Gone Girl, but seriously.  These are people who are the root of their own problems, they are selfish and self centered.  They make horrible decisions and refuse to grow up and take responsibility for themselves.  They are fairly realistic characters...which may be why some people enjoy reading about them.  I know a lot of people like this in real life and even more that get shoved down our throats through various forms of media.  I just usually read to try and escape so reading about shitty characters who get into their own messes then bitch and whine about them just don't appeal to me.

Editing - For the most part the editing was pretty good.  The story was readable and everything ended up making sense in the end.  My only real complaint would be the dragging out of certain secrets a bit to try and make the story more of a thriller then it really was.  There were several secrets that got revealed through out the book, but no major twist so to me the term thriller is used loosely hear, but over all it was solid editing.

Relationships - The book for me was mostly about relationships.  Relationships between husbands and wives, men and women, women and women, people and alcohol, characters and memories.  Everything about this book was fueled by relationships, both real and perceived. Unfortunately most of the relationships in this book are at best unhealthy and at worst harmful.  The story was a picture of how people get trapped in bad head states and ensuing bad decisions that come from it.  There was very little in this book that hinted that these characters were even capable of attempting to have good relationships and that was just really really sad.

Mystery - The central mystery for the whole book is what happened to Megan.  I figured out who killed her as soon as I read about her sleeping with the "mysterious family man".  This was disappointing as I felt it was telegraphed pretty early in the book.  I wanted that mystery to be more...mysterious or at least not so blatant and trite...I think I may be spoiled.

Genre - I love a good mystery and thriller, but I am coming to the understanding that I should probably not read whatever genre this book is in.  It's very specific one...it's like chic lit plus mystery, plus really messed up characters.  Almost all the books I have read in this weird category just pretty much make me mad at the authors.  The funny thing most of them are fairly well written...I just hate the depressing out look on humanity that this style of books tend to have.

Overall Impression - So yeah...this wasn't really my style.  It was an ok story, but I just really really hate reading books that make me hate humanity as a whole.  I realize people are messed up in real life, I understand unlikable characters in books to further the story and add depth, but I don't want to finish a book and feel worse then when I started.  I give this book 5 out of 10 cans of gin and tonic and realize that I need to just not read these books so yeah...Happy Reading Everybody!

5000 Swooning 12 Year Olds

Saw the Divergent movie a couple days ago based on the first book in the Divergent series.  A couple of my station sisters have been reading the books with me and wanted to go see it.  Of course the only day we all had free was opening night, so off to buy our tickets we went.  We bribed the boys with Bourbon Carmel Milkshakes (sooooo yummy!) and off we went.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

The movie was OK, it seemed to be sanded down from the original story to more generic teeny bopper gook, they took out a lot of the tensenes between the Dauntless recruits and replaced it with lovey dovey gush.  They also changed to format of the challenges which kind of sucked  because I thought that was one of the best parts of the book. The producers or writers seemed to have the same problem with the faction premise that I did and mentioned Human Nature being a problem on a couple of occasions to try and nod to the fact that the way factions are set up would never really work.  I did like the casting for the most part, Zoe Kravitz as Christina was probably the best character in the movie (and one of my favorites in the book).  She looked the part, acted the part and generally kicked butt.  I liked the casting of Eric as well, he did not follow the book description but Jai Courtney played the cool cruelty like a pro.  Shailene Woodley as Tris was fine and Theo James as Four is hot and brooding, but nothing super special.  Over all I wanted to see more of

 Tris's journey like we did in the book, the struggle to shed her Stiff personality and become who she really is never came clear in the movie.  It was a weird mix of the movie trying to pack everything in and yet not really hitting any of the main points.  The other unique experiance I had with this movie is seeing it on opening night with 5000 swooning teenage girls who added their own special soundtrack and entertainment value to the whole proceedings.  The Chicago scenes were pretty cool, it's weird seeing somewhere you lived all decrepit and blown up (even if the stupid pink building survived) so that was nice.  Over all it had a very generic teeny bopper feel that did not capture the best parts of the book, and did nothing to dispel my dislike of the faction system.  The music was pretty awesome though. I will probably not watch it again, but I am glad I saw it at least once and will be interested to see where they go with the second and third book and movies.  But I think I will stick to the Hunger Games.

What did you think of the movie compared to the book?  Is it possible to do a YA book as a movie and not make it teeny boppery?  Am I a horrible wife for dragging Hubbin to see this?

Carrot Juice Zombie Infection

Hi Everybody (Hi Dr. Nick), sorry a bit of Simpsons humor, couldn't help myself.  How is everybody on this fine snowy morning?  Everybody got a big cup of hot coffee?  Everybody got there big fluffy blankies? Everybody got their ax in case of a snowy zombie attack? Oh...I'm being told it wasn't actually a zombie attack this morning, just a bunch of idiots who can't drive in the snow...well zombies are way more fun so lets talk about those instead.  Undead by Kirsty McKay is a YA book about zombies read because it was handed to me by my Hubbin who said "this looks cool, you should read it and tell me what happens", so I did.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD.

Bobby has it rough, she is a British native who was moved to the US because of her mothers job and then back to the UK for the same reason, this gives her a weird American/British combo slang accent that apparently is the basis for her having no friends.  Her concerned mother has sent her on a school skiing trip in Scotland to try and help her make some friends. This backfires and Bobby spends most of the trip being teased or ignored.  They are finally on their way back and have stopped at some little cafe in the middle of nowhere for lunch.  Bobby decides she has had enough of the teasing and stays on the bus while the others go in and eat.  Smitty a rebel without a cause is also staying on the bus as his bad boy attitude has gotten him in trouble. Their teacher goes into the cafe to get Smitty some food.  Bobby meanwhile needs to pee...bad, which we all know is one of the worst feelings in the world, she does not want to face her fellow students so she attempts to use the bus bathroom, but is informed by the bus driver that it is not usable when the bus is turned off. Bobby notes a poor guy in a giant carrot suit passing out samples of some veggie carrot juice to all of the kids and teachers.  All of a sudden the bus is hit from behind and the driver goes out to see what happened.  Meanwhile one of Bobby and Smitty's classmates, the popular Alice comes screaming out of the cafe, yelling that they are all dead and generally being incoherent.  As they look around they see the teacher that went to get Smitty food come out all slathering, hungry, and gross.  The kids barricade themselves in the bus until Smitty realizes that the driver has yet to come back.  Alice stays in the bus while Bobby and Smitty go drag him in, noting what looks like a bite mark on his arm.  Chaos ensues and the trio along with the

unconscious bus driver end up at a near by gas station where Bobby finally gets a chance to pee.  They meet up with the pale and geeky Pete who has been hiding in the bathroom, and the unsavory Gareth who is the local gas attendant.  More chaos and more zombies and the gas station ends up in flames, incinerating a good portion of the undead.  Gareth runs away with the only laptop and the kids discover that their cellphones don't work.  They head back to the cafe where the bus driver turns and more chaos.  They hunker down and do their best to barricade themselves in the cafe.  Bobby passes out from hunger, which while embarrassing is the sign for them to go find food.  being that they are in a cafe it should be pretty easy, the only problem is they don't know what it is that turned all of their classmates, teachers, and cafe workers into zombies.  Eventually they puzzle out that it was the carrot juice samples and tuck into their sandwiches.  They hood up with Lily and her 3 year old brother Cam who lost their mother to the carrot juice zombie infection.  They find a castle and break in, hunkering down for the night.  The next day as they are exploring they find what looks like cells, with a headless body in one of them and a locked tower.  The current occupants of the castle come home turn out to be not very nice, they make prisoners of the kids and continue with their plans. Lily reveals that she found the tower key and they withhold the information from their captors who are desperate to find it.  More chaos (are you sensing a theme yet) and little Cam turns into a toddler zombie who promptly turns his sister.  The rest of the crew make it up to the tower and watch the very convenient destruction of their captors.  They go through all of the papers and realize that the company responsible for this zombie menace is the same one Bobby's mom works for.  We also find out that Bobby's dad has recently died of cancer and that she has never had a good relationship with her mom.  So very conveniently Bobby's phone starts working and her mom calls to tell her where to find the antidote and how to escape and bring it to her.  Bobby and company escape and trudge across the ice, being chased by zombies to a little island.  They make Bobby's mom tell them what the heck is going on.  Apparently the zombie disease has been popping up in isolated instances all over the world and Bobby's mother's company was hired to find a cure.   Unfortunately human greed jumped into the mix and the rest of the team sold the engineered disease to some baddies who want to use it as a weapon.  The company itself was actually using the cafe and the carrot juice as a controlled test and have plans to wipe out the whole area once the test has been completed.  They try to escape, but Smitty goes through the ice and is bitten by underwater ice dwelling zombies.   Luckily Bobby uses the cure (that could save all of humanity) on Smitty and hopefully that cures him.  They flag down a school bus that is also returning from a school trip and hitch a ride.  As she drifts off to sleep, Bobby see's a carton of the zombie carrot juice...and it is empty.  The book ends with her screaming that they all need to get off the bus.

Eh, the book was ok.  It kind of felt like on of those movies on Disney or Lifetime that you don't look for, but since their on and the remote control is on the other side of the couch you may as well finish it.  I think the book was going for a snarky/comic feel, on review compared it to Shaun of the Dead (such an awesome movie), but I don't think it quite made it there.  The characters were all stock characters, slightly exaggerated, I think the author was trying to use them as satire, or parody, but she did not go far enough.  The situations were uneven and were resolved either in a cliche way or by some randomly convenient event.  The story itself was very straight forward zombie apocalypse, which sometimes worked really well, and sometimes just felt boggy.   The ending made it very clear that there was a sequel coming, so of course very little resolution was presented.  On the plus side, the author did a good job addressing things I always

wonder about in these kinds of predicaments...like having to pee, you almost never see or read about our hero's using the bathroom, but seriously when you gotta go, you gotta go.  One of the main things I teach my recruits at the fire station is that if you have to use the bathroom, especially in the middle of the night, don't wait 'cause their is nothing worse then doing CPR with a full bladder.  Things like eating, peeing, clothes getting sweaty and gross, hair and make going to heck, all of these things that we would have to deal with in real life usually get glossed over, but are addressed in this book.  I also loved that the three year old cutie was the requisite person to turn. In these situations somebody in the main group ALWAYS ends up a zombie and I love that she made it the kid. I also love that the disease was handed out as juice samples by a giant carrot.  I understand what the author was going for in this book, I think she was trying to make teenage zombie book in the vein of a parody, but the execution was not effective.  It comes across as mushy, predictable and a wee bit annoying.  Also the blurb and back of the book description are not at all an accurate representation of whats in the book, nor is the front cover.  Overall I think I may have actually liked this better as a cheesy Syfy channel movie and I give it 4 out of 10 zombie infected carrot juices.
What is the best vector for a zombie infection?  How would you feel if you found out your mother was working for a zombie company?  How horrible would it be if they infected the coffee supply?!?

Horrifically Normal

I just finished reading The Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls the debut novel of Claire Legrand (who has some of the coolest Pinterest boards). It is a MG book that is equal parts, creepy, disgusting and unfortunately frustrating.  I already know that I am in the minority for my lack of complete and utter love for this book, which is good, I like it when people read and love stories, even if I don't so if you read and loved this book please, please, please take note of my post No Apologies.  That being said I did not hate, or even dislike the book, I just had some issues with it, but more on that in a little bit, first the synopsis.  As always Spoilers Ahead!

Victoria Wright (which is seriously the most perfect name for this character) likes order, her room is neat as a pin and organized to the point even Martha Stewart would be proud. Victoria has the need to be perfect in all things, appearance, grades, tone, voice, everything.  Victoria only has one friend, well actually she considers him more of a project then a friend.  His name is Lawrence Prewitt and he is something of a musical genius, he is also sloppy, loud and much more relaxed then his friend "Vicky" (He is the only one
who can get away with calling her that).  One day Victoria goes to Lawrence's house as usual so that they can walk to school together.  She is informed by his parents (who are acting odd) that he has gone to visit his grandmother.  Victoria goes to school where she notices most of the teachers and some of the students are also acting oddly, kind of super smiley and stiff.  Victoria also starts to notice that certain kids are missing, Donovan who purposely downs bags of treats in flagrant violation of the school rules, and Jacqueline who is a bit of an odd duck, creative, dreamy and not at all "normal" (lot's of air quotes in this post folks).  Some feeling leads Victoria to go visit the Cavendish Home for Boys and Girls where she is greeted by a creepy gardener by the name of Mr. Alice who appears to be puffy with moving skin.  Victoria is taken to see Mrs. Cavendish who gives her some chewy butterscotch candy and assures her that her children are all very happy.  Although she can not see the children, Victoria hears talking and laughter and gets a warm fuzzy feeling that all is well.  As she leaves a paper airplane if flown to her and she takes it with her.  When she gets home she opens it and finds the words HELP US written on the inside. She decides to investigate and goes to the library where all the adults are acting weird. She goes to the archive room and tries to find out anything about the Home and does not have a whole lot of luck.  Her favorite teacher Professor Alban comes in looking frightened and tells Victoria that he is being watched, they find an old picture that looks just like Mr. Alice and Mrs. Cavendish but that is impossible because it is over 100 years old.  As soon as they find this her teacher freaks out and tells her to hide.  The room starts oozing and a ton of shiny black pincer bugs come out of the walls and take Prof. Alban away.  Victoria heads home and realizes that her parents are starting to act strange, just like the rest of the town.  She goes to a Mr. Tibbalts house who informs her that Mrs. Cavendish takes all the children who do not fit the strict standard of normal and "fixes" them...or if she can't fix them they disappear. The townsfolk are all partly bewitched or something and partly allow it to happen because of there need for normalcy.  Victoria heads to the Home where she is promptly captured and placed in a pitch black room full of the pincer bugs.  She is eventually let out and see's that all the missing children are there.  Mrs. Cavendish and Mr. Alice then proceed to do some pretty horrible things to try and make the children "normal", like
forcing Donovan to eat sweets until he is sick and then starving him, or whipping Jacqueline every time she tries to get creative with her art work.  They also punish Victoria's friends every time she stands up to them.  This all gets pretty sick and twisted for a while.  Victoria eventually figures out that the structure of the Home itself is alive and is trying to help her.  The children are served a weird mix of eggs and stinky meat for every meal and they are served by weird deformed little creatures called gofers.  She notes that they have the exact same shape and color eyes and the chewy candies she ate before...gross.  She also discovers that the children that can't be "normalized" are cut down to the hideous gofers  and the extra parts are fed to the kids.  Victoria convinces the others that they have to escape.  She goes to the garden and discovers that the adults that defied her have been turned into trees and they are the ones who have been helping her.  She goes to a hut where Mrs. Cavendish has made puppets out of the adults (I guess this is how she is controlling them) and cuts all there strings.  Mrs Cavendish turns into a giant spider and chases Victoria until she, the Home and the gardens are all swallowed up into the earth.  The epilogue shows Lawrence going to music school and Victoria heading off to college. The End.

Let's jump right into this shall we, lets start with what worked for me.  I did like the character of Victoria a lot, she was a good girl who saw the sense in following rules (which is a nice refresher from the firebrand rule breakers that have been big in heroines lately), she was a good student and wanted things to be orderly...she also found out that she had a core of steel and could use her stubbornness and sheer determination to the benefit of her new found friends.  I also liked the potential commentary on how we overlook bad things, things that just are not quit right as a community as long as we can keep our illusion of "normalcy", we have seen examples of this in the real world, and this was a creative way to comment on that.  The book was
creepy for sure, and the imagery was beautifully written.  Now on to what did not work so much for me.  I did not feel that this was a complete story, there was absolutely no explaining who, what or why Mrs. Cavendish was.  The only real thing we got was she set up shop in this particular town because of the peoples need for order.  There was no explanation given to what she got out of transforming boys and girls into shining examples of good behavior, therefor to me the villain had no real motivation which put a huge damper on it for me.  There were also parts of the book that felt like it skipped around and I found myself flipping back and forth wondering if I missed something.  I also felt (and this is a completely personal thing here) that to much of the potential creepiness turned into out and out disgusting horror.  I don't mind when certain things are put in to illustrate just how evil the situation is, but when I get inundated with them, the horror level goes down and the ew that's just gross factor sets in. The unknown noises that go bump in the night with the occasional confirmation of grotesque horror is much more effective at maintaining the the tension. The ending was abrupt with a bit of hurried resolution that did not show hardly any of the aftermath of such a huge event, most importantly what happened to all the little gofers and trees?  Overall I got a very strong Coraline vibe, all the way down to the sweet motherly figure that goes all spidery on the heroine and the ghost children voices.  I have to admit I liked Coraline much better.  Like I said earlier, I did not hate the book, it's just that all of the aforementioned issues kept taking me out of the story which made it a not so happy read.  I do think the author has potential and I will be looking at her next books because I think she is just going to keep improving with time.  I am glad to see so many people liked it, and hope it encourages her to keep writing.  I give this book 5 out of 10 butterscotch eye candies.

What did you think of this book?  Am I way to nit picky about a children's book?  Who are some of your favorite authors that got off to a rocky start?  Does this book give a whole new meaning to the term eye candy?

Running And Running...Yep Still Running

On my road trip last week I finished a couple of books that have been on my list for a long time.  The book I will be rambling about today is one that is recommended for fans of the Hunger Games trilogy or just the YA dystopian genre in general.  I like me a well set up dystopian society and this series came highly recommended so off I dove into The Mazerunner the first book in a trilogy (plus a prequel).  Overall I have mixed feelings about this book, and hope that finishing the trilogy will fill in some of the gaps and make a better or at least more complete impression.  As always SPOILERS AHEAD

 

We start the book in a small dark room, where our protagonist wakes up with no memory but his name, Thomas.  The door opens and he is greeted by a bunch of teenage boys who are not very helpful in providing any details of his situation.  He is in what the other boys call the Glade, an area of several acres that contains a farm/slaughter house, gardens, a small forest/graveyard, and a ramshackle house called the Homestead.  The whole thing is contained by massive walls with giant gaps on all four sides.  Thomas is assigned to Chuck who until Thomas's arrival was the newest boy. Chuck informs him that a new boy is brought to the Glade every 30 days without fail.  That night Thomas witnesses the walls closing, completely sealing the boys in the Glade.  He finds out that outside the walls is the Maze, which the boys hope by

solving will provide the key to there release.  Thomas has an extremely difficult time getting information about his situation, but eventually figures out that nobody in the Glade has specific memories of their life before arriving, just general knowledge memories.  He also learns that everybody is assigned a job based on their talents and that the Runners are a group of boys who go run and map the Maze everyday in hopes of solving it.  Oddly enough even though nobody remembers anything about their prior life, a boy named Gally insists that he knows Thomas, that it is his fault that they are all stuck in the Glade. The next day while taking a tour with Newt the second in command, a boy named Ben who has been going through what the boys call the Changing goes crazy, screaming about seeing Thomas and attempting to kill him.  He is stopped by Albie, the leader of the group and condemned to banishment outside of the walls.  Thomas is told that banishment is akin to a death sentence because anybody caught out in the maze after dark is always killed by Grievers.  Grievers are a cyborg type monster that look like giant blobs of slimy pink flesh that are augmented by any number of lethal metal devices.  If you are stung by a Griever you must get back to the Glade as fast as you can so you can receive the Grief serum, which brings on the change, which also gives you back some of the memories of your old life.  You would think this is a good thing, but the process is so horrific that even if you don't go crazy like Ben, the boys still refuse to talk about any memories they might have gained.  As all this is taking place withing a day of Thomas's arrival, the alarm for the metal box goes off again and when it is opened a girl is inside.  This is unusual for many reasons, a girl has never been to the Glade before, she came only one day after Thomas, and she bears a message stating that she is the last one, there will be no more.  She goes comatose and is taken to the Homestead do recover.  Thomas is immediately put under suspicion because even though he has only been there a day, nothing strange happened before he got there.  Thomas thinks this is ridiculous as he has no memories of his own, but oddly does feel a sense of familiarity about the girl.  Albie and the leader of the Runners, Minhoe go out to the maze to investigate other strange things and get stuck when Albie gets stung by a Griever.  Thomas, against orders goes into the Maze to try and help them.  He is able to not only defeat several Grievers, but manages to save Albie and Minhoe as well.  When they get

back to the Glade everybody is astonished and Thomas is made a Runner.  Albie gets the serum and goes through the Change.  When he wakes up he tries to tell Thomas some of his memories but is prevented by some mysterious force.  The girl starts talking telepathically to Thomas while still in a coma, telling him that she has initiated the ending...whatever that means.  She wakes up and tells him her name is Teresa and that she remembers that the Maze is a code.  Everybody is mistrustful of the girl, especially since what ever she triggered caused the doors of the wall to remain open after nightfall, allowing the Grievers to come into the Glade.  Gally comes back and tells everybody that the Grievers are going to kill one person a night until it is all over and then sacrifices himself to the Grievers who then leave until the next night. Knowing that he has the memories of how to end this stuck in his head, Thomas intentionally gets stung by a Griever and goes through the Change.  He comes back and tells everybody that he and Teresa were forced by scientists to help create the Glade and the Maze, that there telepathic link made them very special somehow.  The scientist were then got tired of the experiment after a couple of years and dumped Thomas and Teresa into the Maze to finish it up.  They figure out that the shifting Maze is actually a code that needs to be input into a computer that is hidden in an optical illusion of the edge of a cliff.  The gang fights there way through the Grievers, losing most of the boys and finally make it to the outside.  In a supposed final test Chuck is killed by a zombie Gally?  Maybe?  Not quit sure what happened there, but it did.  The remaining boys and Teresa are rescued by a group claiming that they are against this type of cruel testing and explain the current state of things.  A super sun flare fried a good chunk of Earth the same time a plague, called The Flare started ravaging the remaining humans.  The boys were put into the Glade to see who would not give up looking for a solution, even when there was no solution (yeah doesn't make sense to me either).

 Apparently they were looking for a group of boys who would be able to keep up the search for a cure for the Flare, not because they were smart, or had medical inclinations, or any sort of training, but because they kept looking for an impossible solution...even though there wasn't one. Anyways the scientists got sick of waiting for the boys to not give up on finding a solution, even though they claimed there wasn't one, even though there obviously was one 'cause they found it, but that wasn't the point so they sent Thomas and Teresa in to finish it up...to prove who knows what.  The boys and Teresa are put into separate rooms for the night and told they will be completely filled in the next day.  The book ends with a memo from one scientist to another, stating that the fake rescue went off without a hitch and they are looking forward to the next phase of testing.

If you actually read through that whole long synopsis you may have gotten the vibe that a few things did not work for me :-)  I think the hardest part for me to swallow was the premise of the whole experiment, which was to find boys who would not give up looking for a solution, even though they kept saying there was no solution...but there was a solution because they used it to get out in the end.  There was a lot of contradictory information like that in the book, which to me takes away some of its credibility.  My other big issue was that essentially the whole book was about these two kids (Thomas and Teresa) who get dumped into this

experiment and pretty much give the boys step by step instructions on how to get out of the Maze. It seemed like a huge cop out.  Also for having so many info dumps, I was still left very confused on the whole point of the experiment, why it was only boys who were chosen, what was the point of Teresa and Thomas and well pretty much everything.  I get that finding a cure for the plague was pretty much impossible and they were looking for people who would not give up the search, but I still don't understand how torturing a bunch of teenage boys is going to result in people capable of finding a medical cure for this rampant disease.  If I were any one of those boys who had to watch my fellow mates suffer and be killed and then dumped in this horrible world, I would do everything in my power to NOT help anybody.  All that being said I finished the book in less then two days, the story kept me turning the pages and I still want to know what the heck is going on.  The character development of most of the boys, especially Minhoe and Chuck were really well done and watching a group of young guys who were working together to make a peaceful, productive society instead of a savage, fighting, Alpha male one was very refreshing.  I will be reading the next two books and the prequel because I am hoping that all together they will make a coherent story, but at this point I am a bit disappointed. You all go read it for yourself and tell me what you think Ok?

What is your biggest pet peeve in reading?  Have you ever read a book that is page turning and not so great all at the same time?  Do you love how my ramblings are almost as long as the book?

A Feast Of Meh

First off I just want to say I LOVE DR. WHO SO MUCH!!!!!!!  This actually has nothing to do with today's post but I thought I would throw that out there any ways :-)  Mostly I am stalling because I just finished A Feast for Crows and should be doing a review on it, but it was kind of really boring.  So we should just talk about how cool Martha is and how I thought I would never get over Rose, but a kick-ass female doctor as a companion, what is there not to love...oh wait right the review...sorry.  Ok here we go, as always

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert

Spoiler Alert

We start this book with a prologue in Oldtown, home of the Citadel where the maesters forge their chains.  We hear a bit about dragons and meet some novices and of course somebody dies.  Moving on. The iron islands are up next and here is what is going on there.  Balon Greyjoy has died leaving no male heirs.  His daughter Asha wants the crown, but she is female so has very little support.  According to law the iron crown should go to Balon's next brother, the man they call Euron Crow's Eye.  The priest of the Drowned God  Aeron Damphair thinks that it should be the next brother Victarion, who keeps to the old ways.  Aeron decrees that a kingsmoot is what will determine the next king of the iron islands, trusting that his Drowned God will crown Victarion.  Euron Crow's Eys ends up with the crown and promptly starts raiding and pillaging all the surrounding lands, amassing an enormous fleet and becoming extremely formidable on the sea.  Brienne, the lady knight of Tarth is off with the sword "Oathkeeper" which Jamie gave her to go find Sansa Stark and take her someplace safe.  This would fulfill both Brienne's and Jaime's vow to find her and keep her safe.  Along the way Brienne runs into Podrick Payne, the Imps faithful squire and he comes along on the quest.  She also acquires another companion in the form of a knight by the name of Ser Hyle Hunt, not that she is all that thrilled with his company.  They continue their search for Sansa.  By the end of the book all three of them are in the process of being hung by the zombie Catelyn Stark...oh did I forget to mention that? Yep we get a whole 3 pages where we finally figure out that Mamma Stark has been brought back by as a zombie, why?  I have no idea, this book isn't big on answers.  Speaking of our dear Sansa, she is now known as Alayne Stone, the bastard daughter of 

Peter Baylish, who will as you remember in the last book, pushed his wife the Lady Lysa off a mountain and assumed the protectorate of her lands.  Little sickly Lord Robert Arryn, has taken to Alayne and will only follow her directions.  When we leave them, Peter has made plans to marry Sansa off to the heir to the Vale and tells her they will reveal her true name at the wedding, uniting two great northern powers.  Sansa's sister Arya Stark has made her way to the city of Braavos, to join the temple of the god of many faces.  Here Arya becomes Cat, a girl who sells clams and mussels on the docks and continually tries to become "nobody".  She is set the task of learning to control her face, and her words. She only succeeds so far and when we leave her she has awoken blind.  Samwell Tarly is sent to Oldtown with maester Aemon, Gilly and her baby, and a singer who ends up dead at the hands of Arya Stark (which is probably why she ends up blind.)  Maester Aemon dies on the voyage, Sam finally gets it on with Gilly, who he discovers is not escaping with her own child, but rather the son of Mance Rayder.  Jon Snow sent the child away to try and protect him from Melisandre, who wanted to burn him for on of her rituals.  Sam ends up at the Citidel to become a maester himself.  Back in King's Landing, Cersei is desperatly trying to keep control of the kingdom.  Margaery Tyrell has married the young boy king Tommen and is trying to use her influence to become the head honcho queen.  Cersei is of course having none of it and does her best to plot and scheme the little queens downfall.  Cersei authorizes the rebanding of the Poor Fellows, essentially religious holy warriors, which puts her in the new High Septons good graces.  Cersei manipulates various cronies and eventually finds a way to get Margaery accused of treason, fornication and adultery, which is punishable by death.  Unfortunate her plans go awry and she finds herself thrown in a cell, accused of the same things.  Jaime is off trying to set the country back to rights, including taking Riverrun without shedding any Stark or Tulley blood as he had promised Catlyn Stark when she freed him in the last book.  He is fairly successful at his task.  He is also secretly learning to use his left hand as his sword hand, hoping to regain some of his former skill.  Across the sands we see the country of Dorne and witness the princess Arianne attempt to crown the Princes Myrcella queen of the Seven Kingdoms.  She is found out and captured by her own father the Prince Doran, who is a more cautious man.  He has also had to imprison the daughters of his brother Oberyn who are intent on starting a war and avenging their fathers death.   We get a few other little vignettes from people we have never heard of before, half of which are dead by the end of their chapters. All in all this is about all that happened.

A lot of people loved A Storm of Swords  and did not find this book up to par.  I must confess I have to agree with most reviewers, especially in comparison this book just did not hold up at all.  After so much happening in the last three books, this one felt incredibly slow.  In fact most of these stories could have been told in one or two chapters.  I thought Brienne's chapters were especially overly long, and that she had many more chapters then she needed to get to where she was going.  I appreciated that the author was trying to give us some different perspectives, but sprinkling them into the main characters would have worked better for me.  One of the things I missed the most in this book was a sense of caring where the characters were concerned.  As a reader, in the previous books I had a vested interest in most of the characters, even the evil characters usually had their sympathetic moments.  In this book, eh I really did not care what happened to anybody.  By completely cutting out ALL of my favorite characters I found myself wondering what they were up to instead of paying attention to the story at hand.  This book wasn't all bad, and if I didn't have the last three books to compare it to, I may have enjoyed it even more.  I liked most of Cersei's chapters, watching her get more and more desperate was fitting, again it was drawn out longer then I cared, but at least it was a continuation of the previous books.  What I did really enjoy was Arya's chapters and getting to visit Braavos.  I loved the idea of the Many Faced god, and her conflicting desires make Arya a great character. Also the Venice like qualities that Braavos has makes me happy.  I liked seeing Dorne as well, it was nice to finally have an idea of all seven kingdoms.  I also just finished watching Season 2 of the TV version of this show, which corresponds to the second book Clash of Kings (which was awesome!) and it makes me excited for the next season, but it makes me wonder how they will film this book with all of it's main characters missing.  Overall I feel this book could have easily been edited down to about 10 or less chapters that could have been incorporated with another book.  I give it eh 5 out of 10 ruby covered swords.

What did you think of this book?  Were you disappointed or did you find more in it than I did?  Have you been watching the TV show?  Why is the author so obsessed with clothes and flags?